Notes from "How to Run a Startup Like Genghis Khan"

Among the sessions that took place during the first time slot of BarCamp Portland was Kevin Hale's How to Run a Startup Like Genghis Khan. As one of the guys behind the online form startup Wufoo (who were recently acquired by the online survey startup SurveyMonkey), Kevin's been applying the principles inspired by one of history's greatest -- and feared -- military commanders to great effect.

As is my habit, I took copious notes, after which I expanded and annotated them and which I now present below. Enjoy!

How To Run a Startup Like Genghis Khan

In order to preserve the mystery of his death, he had a squad kill the people who buried him when they had completed their task

And in order to be very thorough, he had another squad kill that first squad

Most of you are aware of Khan's reputation: a ruthless killer and sire of many children across Asia

His story is a little more complex than that. What many people don't know is that he was captured and made a slave when he was young, broke free and rose to unite the various confederations of mainland Asia and is considered to be one of history's most charismatic and dynamic leaders

He is responsible for many developments in his part of the world, including opening trade routes, developing a system of writing and promoting religious tolerance across his empire

In the span of 25 years, his Mongol Empire conquered more land than the Roman Empire did in 400. He conquered more territory than anyone in history

With his forces comprising only 70,000 warriors, he took on and defeated armies that outnumbered him 3 to 1

Strangely enough, the things Khan did in order to achieve success are quite applicable to the startup world:

This approach is an example of what I call the "Voltron Inefficiency", where every Voltron episode seems to follow the same pattern:

First, the five members of the Voltron team would try to take on the enemy in their individual lion ships, and lose

Then, they'd merge the lions ships together to form Voltron and still lose

Finally, they'd use the winning tactic: with Voltron formed, they'd pull out the best weapon, the blazing sword and defeat the enemy

The inefficiency: why not just use the best of everything -- Voltron and the blazing sword -- at the very beginning?

Khan's forces didn't fall victim to the Voltron inefficiency: they put the archers on horses, combining mounted cavalry and bowmen

Their horses were smaller and faster, and they wore lighter leather armor (less weight) and only on the front (less weight, and discourages retreat)

Compared to the English longbow, a large, cumbersome and simple bow, the Mongolian composite bow could be folded for travel, was light enough for even the smallest of women to use and had greater range

The startup equivalent of this is to have everyone, regardless of title or position, take on customer-facing roles such as customer support, marketing and sales

They do this at Kayak.com, which brings up the question: "Why pay an engineer $150K to answer phones?"

The answer: if you do this, engineers will fix their code so that they don't have to answer phones

If they hear the same complaint from many customers, they'll fix that problem rather than have to hear that complaint again

This approach makes for developers and designers who become more responsible for the product

At Kayak, the average response time on business days is about 7 - 12 minutes

By putting developers on support, they end up building tools to help the support team scale

Khan had his generals or sons marry people from the places he conquered

He did this to forge alliances and maintain long-term relationships with the nations under his rule

At Wufoo, we're fanatical about creating and maintaining long-term relationships with our customers

Consider the work of John Gottman, who could look at couples fighting and predict with uncanny accuracy who would stick together and who would break up

Our relationship approach depends on the type of user:

With new users, it's like dating

With longer-time users, it's like marriage

There are fights in every relationship, whether within a couple or a relationship with a customer; the types of fights have analogues in both types of relationships:

Reason for fight in a marriage

Customer analogue

Money

Cost and billing

Kids

Customer's customers

Sex

Performance

Time

Performance

Customer relationships are important at Wufoo

We make every one of our employees say "Thank you" to our customers, with hand-written cards